One of our customers was making a box like The Wood Whisperer showed on video recently. He was routing out the inside and found his bit was a bit (no pun intended) too short. Of course he did the “logical” thing, he brought the bit out of the collet enough to compensate. After tightening well, (or so he thought) he began to rout six boxes. Everything was fine until box #6. Realizing it was no longer cutting, he checked to see what was wrong.

This is what he found lying inside the box:In all my years of woodworking, I’ve never seen this before. Moral of this story——-We sell longer bits!

Holy Cow! What was he thinking ( Not safety thats for sure) It looks to be 1/4” shaft and he only had it approx 1/2 ” (at the most) in the chuck!! Good thing it didn’t lodge itself in his neck then he’d look like Frankinstien…....

This would be a good time to ask if anyone has been injured by a broken router bit. Over the years I have broken a few, but they just seem to dribble to a stop on the table. i always feared a broken bit until it happened, and had the reaction I experienced about 5 times. My most recent was an upcut bit that stopped about where it broke, two of the others were v groove bits that i forced too much, did much the same thing.Jack